Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lkrubner | Hacker News Reader

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> do you think it is a place where poor people > can advance more easily than in the USA?

If you go to a store to buy something, do the police gun you down because of the product that you choose? That happens to black people in the USA:

http://bearingarms.com/ex-marine-swatted-black-shopper-death...

If you are walking down the street, do the police kill you because of the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/14/michael-bro...

If your family owns a farm, does the government steal it from you whenever a white-owned business wants your land? That happens to black people in the USA:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/auxiliary/srsa/pages/Articles/SRS%2...

If your family owns land, does the government steal your land because of the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.castlecoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&...

If you commit a crime, does the government lower or increase the years you will spend in prison, based on the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-rac...

If you peacefully walk down a street, and someone decides to kill you, are they allowed to kill you based on the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin

When the government builds a school, does it offer more funding if the children are white, and less funding if the children are black? That happens in the USA:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/business/a-rich-childs-edg...

Warning - opinionated rant. I might be completely wrong.

I don't think this is helpful.

The big problem isn't oppression. It's a problem, but it hasn't been the main one for a long time. The big problem is the poverty cycle.

White flight is another problem. Peer effects (black kids bullying black kids who "act white") is a problem. These are not racial oppression.

Prejudice and oppression (from teachers, employers, police) is still a problem, but it's not the big one. And pretending it is will encourage people to fight black poverty in ways that probably won't actually work very well.

> The big problem isn't oppression. It's a problem, but it hasn't been the main one for a long time. The big problem is the poverty cycle.

The poverty cycle IS a part of the continuum of oppression for black people. Economic advancement has been denying and outright destroyed for these folks ever since being forcefully brought to the US as slaves.

> White flight is another problem. Peer effects (black kids bullying black kids who "act white") is a problem. These are not racial oppression.

White flight is entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. Peer effects are also entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. These have been studied in such great detail.

> Prejudice and oppression (from teachers, employers, police) is still a problem, but it's not the big one. And pretending it is will encourage people to fight black poverty in ways that probably won't actually work very well.

This is total nonsense and is entirely divorced from the reality of racial oppression in the United States, both in the past and today.

>> White flight is entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. [...] These have been studied in such great detail.

Does international research really support that middle class people leave areas where the crime levels go up only where crime is from people of a different colour?

Not American. I can tell you that the "white flight" efects in Sweden is at least hard to distinguish from flight from bad areas; I lived in a couple of those areas (Gottsunda and Akalla). The main differences were the food prices and the crime levels. Not close to the US ghettos -- yet.

I don't know about internationally, but in the US it is absolutely about race. White people simply do not feel comfortable living near a critical mass of black people, and are even less comfortable sending their kids to school with a critical mass of black people -- and that critical mass is low enough to cause significant racial segregation throughout the nation.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin

You're citing a case where the defendant was found not guilty of 2nd degree murder. How are you so sure it proves anything? Do you have a better handle on the situation than the jury did?

To me, it proves that racism is systemic, and not just a cultural problem. I have a hard time understanding the mindset of folks who can look at the Trayvon Martin case and say, "See, Zimmerman was found not guilty, which proves it was not racially motivated and that he did nothing wrong! Everything is fine, racism is dead. God bless America!"

The fact that Zimmerman was found not guilty is the perfect example of how racist our nation remains. Had Martin been a white kid, Zimmerman would be in prison (possibly even facing the death penalty, since Zimmerman is Hispanic).

Edit: I feel like I should be more clear here...Zimmerman's defense was the Stand Your Ground law. However, Zimmerman was the armed adult who stalked and approached an unarmed teenager; Martin was on his way home. In what bizzaro world does the jury, the police, and a whole lot of white Americans, live in that the aggressor could ever be interpreted as the kid? Even if Martin responded with force to the aggressive armed adult, the "Stand Your Ground" right belonged to Martin. Not the armed adult chasing him. If Martin had successfully defended himself from the psychopath chasing him, he'd likely be in jail today. Which is what a racist system and culture looks like.

In response to your edit: Zimmerman's defense did not invoke Florida's Stand Your Ground law.

The reason police gave for not arresting Zimmerman at the scene was the Stand Your Ground law. If that wasn't the defense used, that's interesting, but doesn't alter the facts.

An armed nutbag stalked an unarmed teenager who was walking home from the store. And, somehow, according to police, judge, and jury it was the teenager's fault he ended up dead and his killer walks free. Only in a deeply racist society is a guy with a gun given the right to kill children for no crime other than being black. The "suspicious" behavior that Zimmerman used to justify him grabbing his gun and chasing Martin: he was wearing a hoodie (it was raining and he was covering his head like any sane person would do), he was "looking around" (wearing a hood restricts your peripheral vision...I look around quite a bit, too, when I wear a hoodie), and he took a shortcut through someone's yard (something I did literally thousands of times in my childhood, without ever being murdered for it).

Racism is alive and well.

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